Wildwood Catharsis

Jason was disgusted by his father's obesity, his mother's hair appointments and brand-name makeup. Concertedly, he relaxed the scowl that contorted his features and concentrated only on the running. The running.

The houses had vanished altogether, now. The road was flanked on both sides by a dense legion of trees, a part of the forest that had never been fully cleared, and hadn't been logged at all in well over a hundred years. Jason loved this part of the run, with nothing but verdant green quiet all around him. The tall spruces seemed suspended in mid-motion, and the birches soaking up the sunlight near the road arced their branches out over it, expectant.

Jason's breathing was labored now, but he regulated it, holding the cadence of footfalls, heartbeats and respiration to an increasingly complex and intermingled rhythm. So far he had failed to reach his second wind, the plateau of effort that in the past was what allowed him to run seemingly forever. Sweat beaded and dripped down his temple, and for a moment he swore a vision passed before his eyes, of a shapeless shadow with wings swooping groundward, enveloping him from behind, bearing him down into the moist brown earth. Sooner than he had acknowledged it, the image had dissipated; he had run beyond it. He noticed a footpath to his left.

The trail was only slightly farther ahead, and flowed away from the road at an angle that hid it from cursory view. Abruptly, Jason felt the overwhelming need for something new, an alteration of the routes he had always followed. The soft-packed dirt of the trail, he rationalized, would be easier on his feet and knees anyway. He peeled off the road, trading the warm smell of oil and stagnant exhaust fumes for the cooler scents of evergreen and decay. As soon as he was padding down the path, sunlight sifting through the canopy and ferns brushing by his thighs, Jason sped up again. An uncontrollable urge for speed seized him, and he embraced it with abandon, legs pumping, feet crushing the carpet of pine needles beneath them. He realized that for some time he'd had the chorus of some old song cycling through his head. Gasping for breath, Jason couldn't help but mouth the words:

He had surrendered control of his breathing altogether, now, and his inhalations and exhalations came with rapidly accelerating frequency, his sides heaving and his nostrils flaring with the effort. Though the forest was as motionless as a wax museum, Jason's speed was creating its own wind now, and the force of it rushed past his face like a breath of life. He closed his eyes for a moment and seemed to feel that wind picking up, ready to carry him off. Suddenly he felt transported, and there weren't trees beside him, but the hulking figures of his parents, dwarfing his diminished frame. His mother screamed and slammed the front door just as his father hurled the yellow lamp that whistled through the air before striking a wall and shattering into a thousand glimmering shards. Jason opened his eyes; several seconds had passed, and he corrected his bearing to follow the curve of the trail.

The song echoed through the chambers of his mind, but Jason was beyond all conscious thought. Some part of him suspected that he'd never run the way he was running now, and some part of him wondered if he was even on a path anymore.